‘Inside Out 2’ had the biggest opening day of any movie of 2024

Both pixar and movie theaters could use a hit right now, and it looks like Inside out 2 could be the answer to both of their prayers.

In Thursday night’s previews, the sequel to Pixar’s 2014 animated hit grossed an estimated $13 million. That’s the highest total for any Thursday opening for any 2024 release to date. Early estimates predict the film could gross between $80 million and $90 million over the weekend.

The original Inside out It grossed $356 million in US theaters and $857 million worldwide.

READ MORE: All Pixar Movies, Ranked from Worst to Best

Yeah Inside out 2 can meet or exceed expectations, it couldn’t happen at a better time, neither for its studio nor for the theaters that screen it. Pixar is still recovering from the pandemic, when Disney diverted three of its films (Luke, turning redand Soul) direct to Disney+, and from Light-year very poor performance in theaters in 2022. Last year Elementary earned some of the most negative reviews in Pixar’s history, but the film became a word-of-mouth hit in theaters, in part because there were Very few other movies in family-friendly theaters at the time..

Pixar creative director Pete Docter recently drew some criticism after being quoted by Bloomberg saying that the studio recently went through “a real, intense period of self-scrutiny” and then determined that “the studio’s films should be less of a quest for any director’s catharsis and instead speak to a common experience.”

Theaters are facing a general lack of product this summer thanks to last year’s dual strike of writers and actors, and the box office is down sharply so far in 2024. Several of the films that have obtained have underperformed, including The scapegoat and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which generated a lot of concern about the state of movie theaters and Hollywood in general. A big, honking animated hit for the whole family would go a long way toward silencing those voices at least for a while.